Western Mail Letters: Tuesday, 1 July, 2014

Your letters to the national newspaper of Wales

SIR – To read and see ourselves as others see us can be an unpleasant experience. Here I refer to Michael Gove’s criticism of Welsh education and warnings from council leaders of further swingeing cuts to their budgets expected next year (“Gove in new Wales schools clash”, June 28).

We need to be honest and ask ourselves as a Welsh nation, how on earth did our education service get into this mess? It begs the question, are those governing us in the Welsh Government up to the job?

As for further budget cuts, what the Welsh Government and councils will need to do is to ensure that cuts will be implemented fairly and proportionately across Wales and across council wards.

We must never allow main town wards to keep all the services, like public toilets, which I believe are fulfilling a human need not a human want and should therefore be re-opened all across Wales, bus services, libraries, parks and playing fields, while other smaller communities have all their services taken away.

If this becomes the case, and it looks a serious possibility to me, I predict that many council taxpayers will rebel, asking for their council tax D band average to be significantly cut. And I predict their rebellion will not be seen on the streets but at the ballot boxes across Wales.

Let’s all agree. Saving must start from the top down, not the bottom up. It’s only fair.

Senior management need to accept that the job-for-life culture ended with the introduction of globalisation. Consequently, restructuring local government is badly needed.

While councils are compelled by law to have statutory officers, namely, head of Paid Service, Monitoring Officer and 151 Financial Officer, there is no need for councils across wales to have chief executive officers or corporate management teams.

Indeed, from my experience at Caerphilly County Borough Council I believe this structure is unhelpful, as we councillors are not allowed to sit in and listen to Corporate Management Team (CEO and Directors) meetings. Councillors only get the minutes of these meetings if they request them and even then, one doesn’t learn much as to what was discussed or why. In all my years as a councillor I have never seen a corporate management team meeting agenda or report.

Over the years it has been the practice for the corporate management team to have management information group meetings with the leader and cabinet. However, again back bench councillors are not allowed to sit there in the room and quietly listen in. Apparently, even Cabinet Members are not allowed to sit in on directorate/heads of service meetings at Caerphilly CBC.

One has to ask, Who is in charge? What kind of democracy is this? Where is the openness, accountability and transparency?

I fully appreciate that officers and front line staff are the arms and legs of the council and their work and contribution is truly appreciated but, where is the head of council?

Political party leaders and cabinets must take charge and responsibility for their portfolios.

Under the current Labour administration the size of Caerphilly CBC’s cabinet increased from nine to 10. It should be cut back to six.

Furthermore, the number of unitary authority councillors across Wales should be reduced from 1,264 to a much smaller figure.

Significant savings could be made internally by implementing these changes and, I believe, the public will think it’s only fair for the cuts to start here.

Cllr Mrs Anne Blackman

Nelson Ward Independent, Caerphilly CBC

More local TV watchers needed

SIR – Ian Jones the chief executive of S4C, in his evidence to the House of Commons Media Committee, is wrong to call for this country to have more locally produced English-language television programmes (“Wales needs more English programmes – S4C chief”, June 24).

BBC Wales television is unpopular with much of the population because of the poor quality of many of its programmes and the disruption these programmes cause to UK programme schedules.

The result of this is that hundreds of thousands of viewers along the border and south coast have chosen not to watch BBC Wales and many more will have joined them now that satellite technology makes a choice of viewing available to everyone.

What Wales needs is not more local television but more people watching local television. The best way to bring this about is for BBC Wales is to reduce its local output and for the channel’s controller to apologise for all the poor quality English-language programming that has been foisted on the people of this country over the last 50 years.

Also instead of telling English-speaking Welsh people what sort of television service he thinks they should have, Ian Jones should give some thought as to whether it is good for S4C and for Wales to be a total irrelevance to 80% of the population.

If he were to tune into Wales’ English speaking broadcasting media he would be hard put to realise that he was not listening to news emanating from England and in an accent from the public school end of the spectrum.

Unlike their counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland, too many of our English-speaking broadcasters adopt an unnatural accent that fails to distinguish them from their counterparts in England.

The same can be said of many Welsh people who have gone through tertiary, or, indeed, secondary education and one can understand why so many of those living outside this island think of Wales as some part of England stuck out on its western seaboard with Eire, a nation that they have no difficulty in recognising.

This is not a confusion that afflicts Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the broadcasters, and most of the tertiary educated population, have not been seduced into adopting a more “acceptable” delivery of the English language.

To be clear, I am not talking of correct English, but the spoken mode of its delivery.

An accent projects where you come from, and, ironically, there is no doubt about the origins of those Scots and Irish correspondents who report on Wales’ English speaking broadcasting channels. The question is if this is good enough for them why is it not for their Welsh counterparts?

Derek Griffiths

Llandaf, Cardiff

Don’t blame Welsh for the RCT cuts

SIR – Tony Smith’s letter (“Has time forgotten us in the Rhondda”, June 28) is an attempt to use the Welsh language as a “whipping boy” to justify his claim that there is bias in favour the Welsh language in times of austerity and local council cutbacks.

As a life-long learner of the “hen iaith” I am appalled that he should single out the language for this treatment.

Far better if he would concentrate his anger at the local Labour Party and the ruling Labour Group on RCT Council who are swinging the axe to cut local services.

Ask them why they will not take a cut in their allowances and salaries, albeit a recent decision to cut 1% from councillors’ wage packets was adopted to save a service but why not have a cut of say 5%, 10% or even higher to show the public of RCT that the burden is being shared out?

I understand a motion for such a cut in councillors allowances and salaries was put forward by the Plaid Cymru Group on RCT council but the ruling Labour group chose to ignore this and carry on as before.

I realise that such a cut in councillors’ wages would not make much of an impact on the deficit but it would show the public we recognise your situation and here is our way of sharing the burden.

Ask yourself this Tony Smith: “Why has time forgotten us in the Rhondda?” Look no further than all the years of Labour rule in your valley and the way that your communities have been ignored and allowed to deteriorate not just under the local Labour caucus but also in Cardiff Bay and under successive Labour and Tory Governments in Westminster.

Time for a change, I would say.

Brian Thomas

Merthyr Tudful

Violent offender’s appeal just a farce

SIR – A thug head-butted his girlfriend, hit her with a hammer, burned her with cigarettes and threatened to tear her face off.

He was sentenced to 10 years but later appealed against his sentence. A human rights lawyer took up his case, pointing out that “no serious injuries were caused”.

The appeal was lost, but why did this appeal go to court at all? Oh, of course, money from the taxpayer for the lawyers. What a farce!

D Jones

Sennybridge, Brecon

Holyhead high road

SIR – Please tell Eric Howells (Letters, June 28) that the reason there is “a dual carriageway right through to Holyhead” is that there are upwards of eight sailings a day out of and into the port, whereas Fishguard only has two each way.

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